Shift of Gears, Looking Back and Ahead

Ghostface Killah is hard to pin down. The rapper, a favorite son of Staten Island, has been mesmerizing fans with lyrically swerving story lines and complex beats since his debut in 1993 as a member of the Wu-Tang Clan. But his eighth solo album, “Ghostdini: The Wizard of Poetry in Emerald City,” which went on sale last Tuesday on Def Jam, is a bit of a departure — it’s filled with R&B and soul-style tracks, sung by collaborators like John Legend and Estelle, that Ghostface rhymes over. In an interview that took place in his manager Mike Caruso’s parked S.U.V. around midnight recently, he met with Melena Ryzik to explain this new direction and talk about what he’s listening to now. He sat in the passenger’s seat, she in the driver’s, and Mr. Caruso occasionally piped in from the back. In a wide-ranging, expletive-laced conversation — the profanity has been replaced with milder language in brackets here — Ghostface, 39, born Dennis Coles, discussed his surprisingly nostalgic and catholic tastes.

Q: Why an R&B-style album?

GHOSTFACE KILLAH: It was something I always wanted to do. I would’ve done it before, but you got people around you that tell you, nah, you’re gonna [mess] up your fan base. Whatever it was gonna be, it was going to be a story, because it’s an R&B album, you can’t just rhyme. There gotta be topics, grown man topics, grown woman topics, you ain’t just talking about crack and freestyling. You gotta have situations where the people could see what you’re saying and feel you and relate to you.

Q: What did you listen to for inspiration?

GHOSTFACE: A lot of Dru Hill, Musiq Soulchild, oldies but goodies.

Q: What about some of the newer soul artists you’re a fan of, like Raphael Saadiq and Mayer Hawthorne?

GHOSTFACE: Hawthorne, I met him on the road one time. He wants to link up in the future and do some music. He’s crazy. His music is fire. He got a lot of soul, a lot of Motown soul. The production and how he sings, it sounds like he could’ve been like Smokey Robinson. You would think he was a black guy, to have the soul that he’s bringing to the table like that, but to find out no, it’s even more incredible. It’s like, where’d you get that from? And it sounds dirty too. Back in the day, the music sounded a little bit more warmer and rougher and dirtylike.

GHOSTFACE: You gotta do that, even after a night of drinking. You might be out drinking and you come home and you put some of that stuff on, even if you have a girl with you or not, it sounds so beautiful. You be singing by yourself.

Q: But then you wish you had a girl there.

GHOSTFACE: That pop into your head too.

Q: Did you grow up listening to Smokey?

GHOSTFACE: Mmmhmm, that’s where I get my soul from, all the old greats like that. Not just Smokey — the New Birth and the Moments, Curtis Mayfield. I like Gladys Knight and Patti LaBelle. I would love to do songs with them.

Q: You’ve just remixed the Noisettes’ “Never Forget You.” Who else would you like to collaborate with?

Photo

Ghostface Killahs new album has R&B and soul-style tracks.Credit
Courtesy of Def Jam Recordings

GHOSTFACE: I love Pink. She don’t give a [damn] about [anything].

Q: Vampire Weekend is a group you said you liked. How’d you first hear about them?

MR. CARUSO: My son, he’s 15, left his iPod in the car, and that was on it.

GHOSTFACE: You know how kids be, they on [stuff] before you be on [stuff]. But he knew what he was talking about. The beat was like something I never heard before. It was interesting. It sounded like they could’ve had have some Jamaican in it. I try to listen to all music with an open head, a clear head, try not to say just because I don’t know it, it’s weak.

Q: Is it challenging to keep up with what 15-year-olds are listening to?

GHOSTFACE: The meek shall inherit the earth — you heard that before, right? That’s what’s gonna keep you young and keep you involved. Just because we up in our 30s and 40s and all that, don’t mean that we know everything — we don’t. The ones that are under us, you gotta listen to them. They’re on their stage now, in their little realm, in their prime, so you gotta listen to what they say so you can be hip to everything. Like for instance, you got the South that’s taking control of the music, and I didn’t like the South’s music when it first came out, all that bouncy stuff and little kid stuff, stuff that we was never raised on. But it’s like, that’s they hip-hop, how can I say they ain’t hip, that’s what they do around they way. Like the 15-year-olds, they into skinny jeans. We never wore skinny jeans like that. But that’s hip to them. I can’t get mad at the South, because they’re in the moment right now, they’re glowing, they’re having so much fun, it’s like being back in ’88 again.

Q: You also said you like classic artists like Bruce Springsteen.

GHOSTFACE: He got that voice, that [makes own voice deeper], voice voice, I like him, I like Billy Joel. Remember [singing] “Uptown girl”? I loved that.

Bob Dylan, he had a nice joint, he had lyrics. Sometimes, you gotta listen — listen.

Q: When you’re listening to stuff that’s not hip-hop, are you listening for the sound, the instrumentation or the lyrics?

GHOSTFACE: It depends. Beats nowadays ain’t really catchy to me. But if the beat comes on and it’s crazy, and it catches you, and then it’s murder, regardless of what he’s saying. Like you heard that Jay-Z one, that New York beat [“Empire State of Mind”]? I love that. That beat might be one of the best beats I heard in years. Forget what he said on it, let’s talk about the beat. There’s something about it that makes me want to just get ahead [bobs head] and go in. I wish I would’ve had that.

Q: Back to Springsteen and Billy Joel. What do you like about that?

GHOSTFACE: I told you, I’m an old head, so when I was coming up, I was watching “Hot Tracks,” remember “Hot Tracks”? Channel 7, before MTV? That was my favorite. That come on like 12 or 1 o’clock in the morning, and I’d be up, watching [Singing] “Uptown Girl.” [Humming the melody.] When that break come on, I was young, I might’ve been like what, 12? That’s when I got to Lionel Richie, with the “Hello” video and all that.

Q: When you’re writing, do you hear the beat first?

GHOSTFACE: Of course, nowadays. But when I was younger, a lot of times I would do it without the beat, write the rhyme without the beat. A lot of times I’d be in the shower just catching lines, or when I’m sleeping and it come to me. But then I dunno, I kind of lost that technique a little bit, it kind of ran away from me. I guess when you’re younger, your mind is more open, you could be more receptive. As you get older, it’s like a drawer, [stuff] just piles up, in your mind and your subconscious, that don’t even need to be there, and you forget. That’s why I don’t smoke no more, I’m losing too much.

Q: Do you feel a responsibility to guide younger rappers you like, like Pacific Division and Nipsey Hussle?

GHOSTFACE: No. I mean, I do what I do, but times changed so much. Nothing is the same, nothing ever stays the same anyway. It’s like, you just gotta do you right now. I could try to show somebody something and 90 percent of the time, [they] don’t listen. But these are things, especially if you have kids, you got to watch what you’re doing. If a man is [messing] up his household, your girl caught you [cheating] or whatever, she gonna leave you and you gonna be lonely. You got to talk about these situations on wax. Not only just those types of situations — it could be swine flu, the recession, I’m-broke-what-am-I-gonna-do-next. When people ask me, when are you gonna stop rhyming, I don’t know when I’m gonna stop rhyming because we all got situations. Even when I get 50 or 60 years old, if God spares my life, if I got false teeth and I’m still rhyming, I have to rhyme about that. A woman might go through menopause, you make a record like that when she’s going through that, and they love that. You feel me?

A version of this article appears in print on October 4, 2009, on page AR22 of the New York edition with the headline: Shift of Gears, Looking Back and Ahead. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe